Ecumenical discussion founded upon historic Christian orthodoxy

The Need for a Church Bible

Has anybody noticed that there are too many Bible translations on the market? From 1611 to 1952 and the publication of the RSV, there was one standard English Bible for use in the Protestant Church. The KJV was itself a revision of the Bishops Bible (1568), which was produced as an alternative to the Geneva Bible (1560), both being revisions of the Great Bible (1539). So while there was a brief period of time (1560-1611) when there were essentially two versions of the Bible in Protestant use (one Puritan and one Anglican), for the bulk of the period from 1539 to 1952 there was one, or at the most two, versions of the English Bible. But the publication of the RSV opened up a virtual floodgate, with the NASB (1971), NIV (1978), NKJV (1982), NRSV (1989), NLT (1996), ESV (2001), TNIV (2001), and HCSB (2004) following in its wake. And those are only the most commonly used Protestant translations. I’ve not even mentioned the NEB (1970), LB (1971), TEV (1976), REB (1989), CEV (1989), NEB (1991), God’s Word (1995), NIRV (1996), or The Message (2002). Contrast this with the sanity of the use of the New American Bible (1970) in the Roman Catholic Church.

What is the cause of this? I think it is clear. Protestants in the 20th century began to adopt the notion that the Bible belongs to the individual, and so should be marketed in that fashion. No longer is the Bible the possession of the Church. The Scriptures are to be put into the hands of everybody, to read and interpret as she will. Just as there is no authoritative determination of the canon of scripture (as evangelical hermeneutics texts constantly remind us, the canon is a collection of authoritative books, not an authoritative collection of books), so there is no authoritative determination of the translation of Scripture. Let each one choose for herself what is the translation that suits her needs. And the more options the better!

This same issue shows up in attitudes toward the critical texts of the Bible. Textual criticism has been taken out of the hands of bishops in consultation with ecclesiastical scholars, and has been placed in the hands of a secular academy with varying degrees of commitment to the Church. The consensus of the historic Church in terms of the choice, use and preservation of manuscripts is set aside in favor of the private judgments of scholars who study the merits of textual variants in light of the latest evidence, and whose opinions are always subject to change as the weight of opinion shifts in this direction or that.

Of course these are purely human authorities, whose private judgments are difficult to enforce, so even this is not sufficient. In seminary courses across the nation, pastors-in-training are taught that after they have studied Hebrew and Greek for a couple of years, and gain a basic grasp of textual criticism, they can make up their own minds about the text of the Bible. Each week, as they prepare their sermons, they must investigate the textual evidence as one of their homiletical tasks, and determine what the text of the passage they preach to the people from the word of God will be that week. If they preach on that same passage again a year later, they may find that their judgment has changed, and they will again preach from that passage, confidently asserting that THIS is now the most likely wording of the verse in question. Given the variety of textual variants, over the course of a preacher’s lifetime, she might alter the wording of the Bible countless times as she makes such weighty determinations from her study, in the midst of her busy schedule and load of pastoral commitments. What a recipe for chaos! But that is how things stand in the evangelical church.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have no axe to grind against the academy. I value very much my graduate school and doctoral studies. I continue to be an active participant in academia as a college professor, and I publish from time to time in academic books and journals as time allows, in addition to attending the annual ETS and SBL meetings and so forth. But I do think that in the area of Bible translation, something has gone wrong when the care of God’s word is taken out of the hands of the pastors of the Church and entrusted to academics. In the area of NT textual criticism at least, the path of modern evangelical Bible translation is basically to accept the judgments of the latest eclectic reconstruction (as found in the UBS and Nestle-Aland editions) of the autographs.

Nor am I even denying the secular academy the right to study the manuscripts of the Bible and make determinations about its textual history. That is all fine and good. My doctoral supervisor and friend from the University of Edinburgh, Prof. Larry Hurtado, is one of the world’s leading authorities in this field of study. But the Church should not be dependent upon the secular academy (and of course I do not mean by “secular” to say there are no Christians engaged in those projects, but only that they operate outside the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical service–they are not commissioned by the Church per se) to establish the text of the Bible which will be used in her liturgy, preaching and care of souls. I would make the following suggestions:

1. Textual criticism, as a purely academic discipline, should be allowed to do its own thing. The judgments of the historic Church (which by default point to the Masoretic Text of the OT and the Byzantine Text of the NT) mean nothing in that context, and determinations as to the most likely wording of the autographs will naturally be made upon independent criteria (basically reducing to a combination of the demonstrable antiquity of the witness, and judgments as to what readings best explain the creation of the other variants). Christians can feel free to engage in those projects, provided they understand that they must play by the theologically neutral rules of the academy, and make judgments based purely upon observable evidence, and not theological judgments or predispositions to weigh evidence in favor of the practices of the Church in copying and preserving the biblical text.

2. We really need a modern equivalent of the KJV (1611). The NKJV is not a modern equivalent of the KJV, but simply the KJV in modern English. What we need today is one standard English Bible for the Protestant Church, which will employ scholars who are commissioned in the service of the Church, and who will make judgments in translation, not based simply upon what is hypothetically the earliest wording of the verse in question when examining variants, but what wording best serves to make the text clear and useful for the Church. We have to be open to the possibility that the “best” text is not necessarily the “earliest” text if we are talking about modern use. Scribes (even of the Hebrew Bible) did not simply copy manuscripts, they also edited them; and judgments have to be made about the value of those editorial decisions. It may be in some cases that the edited text is more useful for Church use than an earlier form of the text, even if it more closely follows the autographs.

3. The base text of such a translation would be the Masoretic Text of the Old Testament and the Byzantine Text of the New Testament, because these forms of the text reflect the consensus of the historic Church under both covenants. Comparisons with the LXX and Dead Sea Scrolls in translating the OT, and with the Alexandrian, Western and early versional and Patristic witnesses to the NT should mainly be utilized by way of comparison–and that is how textual criticism should be taught in seminary. The range of variants can sometimes highlight textual nuances and difficulties, and function as exegetical and scribal commentary on the meaning of the sacred writings. On occasion, if the evidence is overwhelming, these alternative witnesses may be used to restore the text of the Bible where the wording of the Masoretic or Byzantine Text is clearly corrupt.

4. Who would do such a translation? Here is where the dream gets messy. The only Protestant body with bishops who can serve as jurisdictional pastors of the whole Church is the Anglican Church. So a newly formed orthodox Anglican province (currently in process of formation) would be the ideal. It would then be the responsibility of the Reformed and Lutheran and Methodist and Congregationalist (here I am putting all the Baptists, Pentecostals, and Bible Church evangelicals) bodies to form subordinate unified jurisdictions which would pledge their loyalty in Christ to the pastoral care of all Protestant bishops, with the goal in mind of creating formal bonds of representative unity (not necessarily meaning theological and structural uniformity) in the faith. Each of these groups could have scholarly representatives on the Bible translation committee, all conducted under the supervision and with the spiritual commission of Protestant bishops. The resulting Bible would then replace all the existing English translations, and become the standard Bible of the Protestant world, and a pregnant symbol of her spiritual unity of faith under the word of God.

Obviously, I’m dreaming. But dreams are the soil of motivation and renewal, and that is something which our fragmented body of Christ surely needs at the present time.

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43 Responses

That’s a good distinction about needing a “contemporary KJV” but not a “KJV in contemporary English.” The unifying aspect of a common Bible cannot be stressed enough. The multiplicity of Bible translations parallels the multiplicity of translations of common worship texts, especially the Lord’s Prayer.

To paraphrase Diogenes Allen, what we have now resembles more the confusion at Babel than the deep communion wrought on Pentecost.

For the so-called liberal protestant churches, we have a de facto standard, the NRSV. With the push towards the RCL, publishing groups reproduce Sunday lections in this translation, helping the NRSV to spread farther. Following this lead, Bible commentaries, sermon helps and curricula (based on the lectionary) also use this translation.

Do other church families have a similar experience? For a time the RSV Common Bible and Common Lectionary offered a similar promise, until NRSV became the new thing. Many evangelicals seem to be migrating from NIV to ESV in a similar de facto way.

Is a canonical, de jure approach the best to take? It’s easy enough for Anglicans (and perhaps others) to legislate Bible translations. We’ve done it for ages. Is a de facto, commercial approach more effective now? I’d be interested to hear about how we might do this in a practical sense.

I agree with you on the need for a universal Protestant translation of Scripture. The consumerist ethos of the modern evangelical churches has made a mockery of the holy Word. I was struck by this the other day while looking through the pages of different bibles offered in the CBD catalogue. I said “I hate these Bibles” to my wife who was sitting beside me. She was shocked to hear such words come out of my mouth. I stammered for words… flipping through the pages of the catalogue… “These Bibles… all these Bibles… it makes me sick to my stomach.” She then understood well what I meant, and nodded in agreement.

It is joyous to possess the freedom to print and spread the Scriptures so freely in our day. It is a wondrous acheivement of the Reformation to have made such a thing possible. But things have far surpassed anything resembling a pious and reverent treatment of the sacred text of which the Reformers would have approved. We treat the Scriptures like we treat our cars or our televisions or our toaster ovens: simply a commodity to fulfill our individual felt needs. And I think we’re all guilty of it to a certain degree.

Along with you, I think a major problem here is the abstraction of the biblical text from the life of the Church. As you have implied, what really matters for evangelicals is having a Bible all their own, because that is “where it’s at.” Our sacramentalization of the “quiet time” has come to drown out all forms of ecclesial piety in significance, and thus the most important thing is for one’s quiet time to be as opportune as can be, and finding the right Bible to suit one’s own needs is thus foundational to a proper spiritual experience. In this view, a sense of the Word of God as the text of the entire Body has been well nigh lost.

[As a side note: it’s always humorous for me to hear people who don’t even know Hebrew or Greek, or who have only had like one semester of one of the languages, talk about their translation preferences. Something just doesn’t quite register there.]

As to specifics: I agree with the first two points completely. However, not being as well-schooled as I probably ought to be in the field of textual criticism, I can’t properly assess point #3, so I’ll let others have a go at that. And as a Presbyterian, point #4 makes me somewhat uneasy. I would rather see Anglican Bishops working in conjunction with learned Potestant pastor-theologians of other denominations as equal participants in such a project.

But as for the substance and main point of the post, I agree entirely. If such a thing were to ever happen, the possibility for the eventual renunion of the Protestant churches would be greatly increased.

“Contrast this with the sanity of the use of the New American Bible (1970) in the Roman Catholic Church.”

Sane to have one translation for the church’s liturgical use. Not sane because the NAB is one of the worst translations in contemporary English, both in terms of translation accuracy and literary beauty. The NAB is ugly, banal, and very sloppy.

“The determination of the Hebrew and Greek texts to be translated into English should not be put into the hands of non-ecclesiastical committees.”

This would be great if one could have confidence that the church officials involved had the relevant training. I’m trying to envision what this would look like in the context of my own current denomination, the PCA. Do I really want untrained ruling elders (or teaching elders, for that matter) sitting on committees to make these decisions? Their ordination doesn’t automatically confer upon them the ability to do this work intelligently.

I would not envision anyone operating on such a hypothetical translation committee who was not both a churchman and a properly credentialed OT or NT scholar. And you would have to place the pastoral oversight of the project I have in mind in light of the larger ecumenical vision which I describe in the essay. The scenarios you describe would not be involved.

I certainly don’t think anyone would advocate having men untrained in the languages and in related theological disciplines contribute to the translation of Scripture. “Ruling elders” for sure would be out of the question (unless they were men with advanced degrees recognized and sanctioned by the church for such a task), and even teaching elders who are not recognized for their proficiency in the languages would not be “in.”

This is how it has always worked: men tallented in certain areas are entrusted with tasks which they are equipped to handle.

God has already dropped His word down in perfect form for the masses. It’s called the English Standard Version…and you know it!! :-)

Ok, I’m just funnin’.

Very good post and very good thoughts. The proliferation of versions is, I think, largely market-driven. For instance, it’s widely assumed (not without reason) that the SBC commissioned the HCSB so that it would not have to pay royalties to Zondervan to quote the NIV in its SS literature. And examples like this abound, I’m sure.

So I suspect that your dream will die at the feet of the almighty dollar, plain and simple. But it’s a good dream and one I share!

I agree Wyman. But my hope is that if God would ever give the Church the grace to get her act together and start to act as one, and take steps to show her unity in Christ in concrete forms (not just pious language) then all sorts of things could happen. I think a common Bible and a common liturgy (in general terms) would go a long ways toward embodying that ideal. But yes, given the current wedding of Christianity and consumerism, my vision is hard to imagine being realized.

Good to hear from you by the way. If you ever want a place to post your latest meanderings, I know you would be welcome around here!

In reflecting on the subject I am instinctively “for” the idea in general, but in retrospect I have several questions and concerns that seem to defy a “unified field theory” of how to proceed (and a gripe or two thrown in!).

1. We speak as if all these translations were substantially different from one another. Is that really the case? Are the differences so great we have “lost a common Bible in substance”? How different is the NRSV from the RSV from the ESV? There are some differences to be sure. Are the differences between the NRSV and the ESV or the ESV and the NIV so great that the use of either one means one will lose the Christian faith as I believe one would if one were to follow the “New World Translation”? I’ve personally had to give up my quest for the ‘perfect bible’ and trust the Lord to help me with what’s available… I’m comforted by the fact Augsutine seemingly never exegeted greek or hebrew texts though I can read Greek still to some degree and use Hebrew tools)!

2. Could it be that we perhaps had a common bible for quite some time and the “bishops” didn’t care? The NIV has functioned as a defacto “common bible” in the evangelical world for quite some time. If the evangelical world by “voting with it’s sales dollar” “chose” a common bible, was it so bad that the “bishops” could not have accepted it and worked with the broader church to improve the translation? Does the Christian Bible market in any sense reflect the voice of faithful people who love God’s word especially since there are no “protestant bishops” who’ve been hard at work providing alternatives?

It’s also been the “evangelicals” who are behind the ESV too, not the bishops. Will the “bishops” get behind it? The “Bishops” on the modern scene who are responsible for protecting and PROPAGATING the Bible have either been behind the NRSV, a Roman version, or holding on to the KJV in defiance of change. Why should we expect leadership from them now or ever on this issue?

3. Assuming some bishops did want to do this what might it look like? One model for this might be how the Orthodox Church is working with Thomas Nelson to create a Bible with a NKJ NT and an OT similar to the NKJ but based on the Septuagint. ( A bit wooden from the excerpts I’ve seen but I still might get one to consult…)

4. There are two broad categories of difference in bibles that have yet to be adressed… the underlying text of the original languages and the translation theory.

A. As I said the Orthodox want an OT based on the LXX instead of Hebrew because they consider that “orthodox”. Evangelicals (who got it from the Anglicans Westcott and Hort!) have used an eclectic NT text not the textus receptus. Is there any agreement on the “classical” text that could become the basis for a common bible project? That remains to be seen. I’m sure the LXX is helpful but in many ways it was the “NIV” of its day yet it retains some translations that likely didn’t suffer the minimization of messianic overtones after the Christians came along that the Masoretic text does. I’m not comfortable using the Textus Receptus alone. I studied the Majority Text theory some but it has its own oddities. But this issue would have to be addressed. Where to start?

Could the bishops (if they actually exist to undertake this task) work with an existing text like the ESV and use a mechanism that already exists (i.e. requesting the translation committee make suggested changes) work better than a de novo translation?

B. Regarding translational theory. Anyone who doesn’t translate 1 Kings 14:10 using the phrase “pisseth against a wall” literally as an idiom for male household members has some “dynamic equivalence” in their soul! So where’s the dividing line?

C. Can we have a “common bible” for “ordinary” use but alternate translations/paraphrases for personal devotion? I would think so. Put another way, is it SINFUL to produce a text like the NIrV which is written at a 3rd grade level to accommodate large numbers of people even in the US (say over 50%? I don’t have the numbers in front of me) who are poor readers?

Another way of asking this is “to what degree was the Incarnation ‘dumbing down’ to our level?” The answer we give to that may hint at how “dynamic” “dynamic equivalence” may be permitted for secondary translations in the interest of evangelization. I say that as someone who love literal translations for picking up nuances and biblical-theological themes.

Well, those are my questions at least. I like the common bible impulse but we do not seem very close to arriving at a solution unless we can perhaps harness what the “market” has produced and help it along.

I agree that most new “translations” seem to have no real warrant other than avoiding royalties to Zondervan or Thomas Nelson. The HCSB at least had it’s own raison d’etre for a time – it was supposed to be a modern language Majority Text version until Arthur Farstad died. The ESV was a good idea but I wonder if it’s scholarship on biblical backgrounds and textual issues is always up to speed of if they favor traditional renderings. And as an evangelical, how much money is the ESV injecting into the NCC… they did or do pay a royalty for the use of the RSV text! But people who’d never be caught dead supporting the NCC are pushing the ESV as if there’s no connection!

I shall cease and desist. May the Lord bless His Word and guide us in the best way to protect, preserve, and propagate it!

1. With respect to differences between the versions, yes, I think the differences of wording are important. What if everybody in the Anglican Church was using one of seven or so different versions of the BCP? Only if we take the Bible out of the context of liturgy and congregational use do the differences of wording between the versions begin to seem trivial. I see prayer and Bible reading as going hand in hand and belonging in the same context. There was wisdom behind the standardization of the text we find in the MT and Byzantine Text.

2. Not sure what to say to your second point. It’s hard for bishops to be part of the solution to the chaos of Bible translation given all the other problems the Church is facing. That was why I put this project (just a dream really) in the context of a broader ecumenical renewal.

3. I think something like the ESV could easily be adopted for the Old Testament. However, the NT calls for a fresh translation of the Byzantine Text into English for Church usage. All subsequent lectionaries would then be patterned off of that.

4. As an Anglican I would differ from the Orthodox in their assessment of the MT (as would the rest of Western Christendom since Jerome), though on a case by case basis the LXX might have superior readings. I would argue that the text of the New Testament should be based on the Byzantine Text, not a modern eclectic reconstruction of the New Testament. We should receive the text which the Church has handed down to us, not the text which scholars have created from the soil of their modern studies.

5. As to translational theory and literallness, I’m not one to get hung up over such matters. Basically something in the RSV, NRSV, ESV range is going to be of most use for preaching and study. I don’t have big problems with “dynamic equivalent” translations like the NIV, though I would prefer not to take so much interpretive liberty with the text, and leave more room for the clarity of details to come out in study and exposition. The problem with the NIV is it often makes overly detailed interpretive judgments, which the preacher/teacher will then have to correct if she disagrees.

6. I really think there are problems with the whole notion of “personal devotion” which is distinguished from the common life of the Church. The plethora of Bible translations sends the wrong signal as to what kind of book the Bible is to begin with. It would be far better for all Christians to be reading the same daily selections with the same wording, just as they pray the same prayers from the BCP in their morning and evening prayer time. Again, I am struck by the fact that both the Jewish and Christian churches of antiquity felt an impulse to standardize the text of the Bible for common use. I suspect there is a real gem of wisdom there.

I couldn’t agree more with points 1 and 6. As I said above, the abstraction of the biblical text from the communal life of the church is in my opinion the major issue here. Is it okay for individual Christians to use a translation which best suits them? Well, yeah… it’s better than not reading the Scriptures at all. But this isn’t a proper mindset. It may be permissible, but it is not natural, nor should it be desired. We have lost all conception of a corporate ecclesial piety, and the separation of the quiet time (which is, in intent and purpose, the real Eucharist of modern evangelicalism, with the altar call/sinner’s prayer/conversion experience being the real Baptism) from the communal life of the wider church is just another symptom and/or contributing factor to the fragmentation of ecclesial life. Our personal piety ought not be something separate from the piety of the Body of which we are members. Such a conception of Christian piety is my opinion utterly foreign to the teaching of the New Testament.

This ties in perfectly with Steven’s basic point in his post: “Speaking Bible.” How can we “speak Bible” to and with each other when our Bibles are speaking different things to us? Of course, as Charles (is that Chuck H.?) points out, the differences between the major translations are not substantial. However, they all nevertheless do speak a different language and use different terms. The fact that different churches are reading different Bible languages (and even different individuals within each church!) pretty much does away with the possibility of a common “Bible speak” or liturgical life.

I do think we need to differentiate between a Bible for personal study and a Bible for liturgical use. “Study bibles” are a relatively new phenomenon and the translators who worked on the KJV were less concerned with personal study as with its use within the liturgy of the C of E. The KJV was not designed to be read but to be heard as the Word of God was proclaimed in the churches throughout England and its colonies.

Any “common bible” should go hand-in-hand with a common lectionary and even a common liturgical tradition. I believe that any uniting around a common Bible will be extremely difficult without addressing the question of how we worship. I do not believe the many trivializations of the Holy Scriptures passing as Bibles (here I am speaking of the many comic book bibles, slang bibles, teen magazine bibles, etc. and not legitimate translations) would be possible if so many churches had not trivialized their worship of God. Lex orandi, lex credendi.

As I said earlier… I agree with your “dream”. But I’m also interested in practicalities… how to work towards dreams.

I think the largest barrier in bringing the church and academy into an alignment is the issue of the underlying text. While I would consider myself a “presuppositionalist” regarding the apologetic task, I’m skeptical enough of the Byzantine text not to start off with the assumption that the church did the right thing at every point. The fact that there are different manuscript families even within that tradition show a lack of complete uniformity. But I would be open for more discussion of the issue from the standpoint of textual criticism – but I doubt most practicing NT scholars would (and I am not one).

Regarding personal devotion – it usually proliferates when the church’s common life is seen as not being so lively. I’d suggest this can be seen in the case of pietism’s rise in the context of confessional lutheran orthodoxy. As Bo Giertz’ “Hammer of God” made clear to me, that occurred when the clergy failed to demonstrate the life giving value of the confessions and the liturgy and people seek it elsewhere. I suppose that’s why Chrysostrom said “The streets of Hell are paved with priests’ skulls”.

I need to make it clear that I see the Byzantine Text as the preferred text, not necessarily the earliest form of the NT text (though I do believe it deserves equal consideration alongside the other text-types). Most text-critical scholars reject the Byzantine Text because they are trying to reconstruct the earliest recoverable form of the text. I don’t look at it that way.

My view as to the practice of textual criticism would be most sympathetic to the rigorous eclectic method (which puts the most weight upon internal criteria). I see the Byzantine Text as one of the forms of the text which arose out of the ashes of the copying of the NT in the early Church, but not necessarily as equivalent to the autographs. I am not a Majority Text advocate in that sense. A critical text (which aims to recover the most ancient form of the text) and an ecclesiastical text are not the same thing, and I believe Bible translation should be based on the latter, though of course allowing for the possibility of corruption and correcting the text by other kinds of witnesses on a case by case basis.

It also goes without saying that I am not any kind of authority in the field of textual criticism. I’ve been exposed to it like anyone else with a Ph.D. in New Testament studies, but it is not my area of specialty. I’ve delved into the literature in the field enough to form some general assessments however. After all, pretty much anyone who studies Greek in seminary comes away with some point of view, though most nod by default to the reasoned eclectic method. I no longer feel comfortable doing that.

Would it not be nice if all Christians agreed to live in one united Visible Church and all heresy were abolished and everyone used the 1549 Book of Common Prayer? I too have pipe dreams, and as much a I share the disgust with the rampant commercialism of superfluous translations, Paul Owen’s desire seems about as realistic as the thought of Hillary Clinton and Katherine Jefforts Schorri joining a Trappestine convent somewhere in the Falkland Islands.
As long as the local Christian book store takes Visa and Mastercard, it aint a-gonna happen, Paul!

I will address this point:
“I would argue that the text of the New Testament should be based on the Byzantine Text, not a modern eclectic reconstruction of the New Testament.”

This is a non-issue. Approximately 15% of the NT Greek text is involved in variant readings; the other 85% is identical. The 15% is largely without doctrinal significance, and no doctrine of the Christian creed hangs on a disputed text.
So anybody who worries about textual criticism needs to get a life.

But it would be nice to have a common Bible, at least for liturgical purposes. The other day as I was browsing in th local Bible Discount Warehouse, among the Chick pamphlets and Praise Chorus CD’s and other religious paraphernalia, I happened upon a newly edited printing of the KJV, done by Cambridge. The one striking innovation was that prose passages were set in paragraph form and poetic passages set in proper poetic form, IOW, the KJV in RSV format. It contained all the Apocrypha and the “Preface to the Reader,” a little known treasure. But for the stiff price of about $80, I would have bought it.

Paul, you had an intriguing thought about Anglican bishops getting together for this translation project. Now how many Anglican bishops read Greek? I probably could seat them all at my small dining room table. A group of Presbyterian scholars could handle this well. But as an Anglican, I know, (how well I know!) the limitations of my co-religionists.

[…] Will @ 12:00 am Writing in the Evangelical Catholicity blog, Dr. Paul Owen has an essay titled The Need for a Church Bible that I certainly sympathize with quite a bit. I suppose my own idea is that it would be much […]

I believe liturgically all our Scripture texts are from the KJV, so nobody cares which version you read in your private time. The only exception to this usage is when my priest does morning prayer during the week, he’ll use something like the Jerusalem Bible or some other translation for the Scripture readings.

“Because so much has been said about textual variants, many people have received the impresson that the New Testament is on shaky ground. Not so! Fully eighty-five percent of the text is the same in all types of manuscripts. As for the other fifteen percent of the text, we should point out that much of the material concerns details that do not even show up in an English translation. Such things as word order, spelling, and slightly variant forms of some verbs are seldom reproduced in transaltion.”

I could parallel this with similar statements from Bruce Metzger’s work on textual criticism, and Metzger was on the opposite side of the aisle in text. crit. controversy! Paul Owen sets the figure even higher, at 90%, and he may well be right.

Devout readers of the NT can be confident that they have in English dress the very autographa. Those who worry about the remaining 15% or less, none of which is of any doctrinal consequence, simply need to get out more.

Good post and the comments are very insightful. This idea of a “common Bible” is one that I’ve given a bit of thought to over the years, but perhaps for more pragmatic reasons.

First, with the advent of the proliferation of Bible translations after 1952, Bible memorization has fallen off dramatically. There may be other reasons for this, but the repetitive reading/hearing of only one translation certainly contributes to “hiding the word in one’s heart.” My grandmother could quote vast portions of Scripture, all in the AV tongue, but I can’t. I may be able to tell you what a passage says, but apart from the very familiar passages that everyone can quote (and what we use in the liturgy), forget it. I think the use of four or five different translations hasn’t helped me in Bible memorization at all.

Second, because of the number of translations available we have begun to lose what was once a common biblical language. For instance, at one time everyone knew what “mammon” was: “You cannot serve God and mammon,” but now we have “wealth,” “money,” “riches,” etc., and I find myself having to define “mammon” for people. Neither are we now casting our pearls before swine (but “pigs”), expecting the “Comforter” (now “Helper” – ugh!), and so forth. Yes, these alternate renderings mean the same thing, but a common biblical language is disappearing.

And finally (some have alluded to this in comments 7, 15, and 17) there needs to be some attention directed to liturgical usage, and this simply isn’t done in modern translation committees. I believe a lesson can be learned from the KJV translation teams. According to Adam Nicolson in his work “God’s Secretaries,” the translators gathered to read their renderings aloud before deciding which renderings to use. Virtually all these men were steeped in a liturgical tradition which not only read the liturgies out loud at each service but, in many instances, chanted them in the main services of the Church. And the result was a translation which not only sounded very poetic, but also lent itself to being sung – something virtually all modern translations have ignored since they have been composed by teams of scholars whose concerns with accuracy have trumped any concern with either asthetics or liturgical usage.

About the only modern translation that still lends itself to liturgical use is the RSV. For the most part, it still maintains a rhythmic sentence structure and the word choices are far less dissonant than most of the modern renderings (see my point above: even James Earl Jones can’t make “hovering” sound right in Genesis 1:2!). I had hopes for the ESV when it was first announced as it was supposed to be not only a minor revision of the RSV, but it was also being touted as the first modern translation to actually have a literary editor. Well, evidently Dr Ryken isn’t a poet. I used the ESV for a couple of years in our Sunday lectionary (I believe you are using my work at All Saints’), but abandoned it after the end of the second year in favor of the RSV as the RSV not only contains better cadences and rhythms for liturgical use, but it also maintains more “common” biblical langauge than virtually anything else in use today.

So yes, I agree that it would be nice to have a universal Bible for the Church – and not just the Protestant Church but all the Church – but hopefully it would also be liturgically sensitive to those of us who still sing parts of our liturgies. But I won’t hold my breath and until then I’ll still use the old RSV (at least until our Bishop tells me otherwise).

For my money, the RSV (or possibly, the NRSV) already is a good candidate for what you call for, and not just for “the Protestant Church” but for the Church, period, including Orthodox and Catholics. I think there are too many Bible translators who could find something better to do. We have enough, already!

I swear I hadn’t read Fr. Ward’s comments before I wrote mine (I heavily skimmed Paul’s as I am in a hurry and need to get to my “real job”), but I wound up almost repeating his words, especially “not just the Protestant Church but all the Church” and the “vote” for the RSV. I think it’s great that we seem to be on the same page in this matter.

Apart from its dependence upon a Greek text that has been reconstructed from the mass of variants based on the eclectic judgments of modern scholarship, I agree with you that the RSV (and the NRSV) comes close to what I am calling for. But the National Council of Churches is not a Church, and so the RSV has not been endorsed by the Church per se, but by a para-Church organization. That has certain advantages, but it assumes an ecumenical vision that is different than what I laid out in this and my other post on the topic (“More Thoughts on a Protestant Bible”).

I don’t know all the ins and outs and technical stuff as you do, but I still feel we have enough Bible translations and that such energy that would be devoted to yet another could best be put to other use. Just my opinion, that carries little weight.

It is good to see others advocating what I proposed early on in this discussion, the acceptance of the RSV as our “common Bible.” For those who are using the modern lectionary, with its three lessons in three cycles, you might be interested in what Ignatius Press already has in print, described on their website:

“This Lectionary is based on the new, Second Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, which replaces archaisms (such as “thee” and “thou”) and uses standard English. The RSV Lectionary text has been reviewed and recognized by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments to be in conformity with Liturgiam Authenticam, the Holy See’s recent norms for biblical and liturgical translations. In fact, this Lectionary is the only English-language lectionary presently recognized as conforming to Liturgiam Authenticam. It is also the only English-language lectionary whose text is identical to that found in a published edition of the Bible . The new RSV Lectionary has been approved for use in the Antilles Bishops Conference.”

The price for the two volume work is $270.00. Oddly, it is not currently approved by the US Catholics Bishops Conference, although it has been “reviewed and recognized” by the authorities in the Vatican. One feature I would find disappointing is the replacement of the traditional pronouns with “you” in the Psalms. But that’s another argument.

Although Paul is still fretting over textual criticism, the theological watch-dogs of a very conservative Holy See have no problem with “the eclectic judgments of modern scholarship.”

With all due respect, I’m getting a little irritated with your repeated jabs. I’m not “fretting” over anything, nor do I need to “get out more” or follow any of your other less than helpful suggestions. I think I have made it very clear that I view textual criticism, as a scientific discipline with the goal of advancing modern knowledge for society, as having a useful and legitimate place. I just don’t happen to think that the Church should be dependent upon such labors for its Greek text for translating the NT, when the scribes of the Church have already made those judgments for us and handed it down in the Byzantine Text. I’ve made it abundantly clear that it’s just my own opinion, and I’m not running around announcing the doom of the world based on the Church’s adoption of multiple translations.

Since the “scribes of the Church” (exactly who were they?) have already given us an authoritative text and made final judgments for us, what is exactly is the purpose of “advancing modern knowledge”? I’m not taking jabs, just trying to understand your position. But you seem to want to have it both ways. Why would Aland, Black, Metzger, Wikgren, et al. continue to slave away sifiting through papyrus after papyrus when the official text has already been pre-determined by “official scribes,” a somewhat nebulous group? Who were they and who made them official?

I have already explained my view on these points more than adequately if one reads my essays with care, but I’ll address your points:

1. The scribes of the Church are the scribes who copied the manuscripts which conform to the Byzantine Text-type (i.e., the vast majority of the surviving manuscripts). This text-type by all accounts began to gain dominance no later than the mid-4th century.

2. As I’ve already said, I think there is a difference between a scientific approach to the discipline (as textual criticism is practiced in the academy), which by definition must be theologically neutral, and an ecclesiastical approach. Modern knowledge in the academy is largely (obviously assumptions play a role) limited to what can be observed and “proven,” and operates without a theological bias toward Christian assumptions about the role of the Church in the preservation of the NT text. Operating on such a basis, a lot can still be said about scribal practices, patristic quotations, manuscript evidence, versional witnesses to the text, and so forth, but it is not going to start with the form of the text which begins to show up in copies used in most of the churches (where Greek is the dominant language) in the mid-4th century and work backwards from there, assuming the priority of the Byzantine text. I wouldn’t expect scholars in the academy to work on the basis of such assumptions.

3. What made the scribes who passed the Byzantine text on to us “official” is simply the fact that the care of God’s word was entrusted to them, and this is the form of the text they have given us. The Alexandrian and Western text-types gradually disappeared from the textual record. There is a big difference between looking at what the scribes preserved and what they set aside, versus modern scholars sifting through the variants one by one and making hypothetical judgments about what is most likely the original reading and what is less likely. What a lot of people fail to keep in mind is that the modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament do not actually “exist” among the ancient manuscripts copied by the Church. They are entirely hypothetical, case-by-case reconstructions of the original autographs, or at least the earliest recoverable form of the text. So instead of basing our text on the objective artifacts which the Church has passed on to us in the manuscripts, modern translations depend upon a form of the text which exists nowhere in the actual world, but only in the minds and judgments of modern scholars as they make case-by-case judgments about the variants.

“The Alexandrian and Western text-types gradually disappeared from the textual record. ”

If they have disappeared, how do we know they are wrong?
If they have indeed disappeared, why are they even a problem?

And why are “ancient scribes” more authoritative than
modern scholars? I believe that Brutce Metzger is a man of faith, as were Westcott and Hort. Do you have any evidence that the “ancient scribes” (whom you have not yet named) were men of any deeper piety?

And if this Byzantine text is truly “official,” how many people beyond yourself have come to this discovery? Is there any Church body or Church agency which has publicly made such a determination?

1. By disappeared, I mean that manuscripts of the other text-types were gradually eclipsed by the dominance of the Byzantine Text. I’m not sure that I even understand your questions to be honest, but I would think it obvious by now that I am saying they are the “wrong” text-types for the Church to follow based on the fact that from the 4th century on, in the region of the Empire where the dominant language was Greek, the Byzantine Text became dominant in the use of the Church. Prior to the 4th century there is very little evidence from that region, so we can only speculate.

2. Ancient scribes are more important than modern scholars because they were actually copying and preserving the copies of the text of the NT, not reconstructing the NT based on their case-by-case judgments about the most probable original readings among the variants. Scribes and text-critics are apples and oranges.

3. Not sure why you keep asking for the names of these scribes. Nobody knows their names, so what is your point?

4. The Greek Orthodox Church “officially” views the Byzantine Text as the proper ecclesiastical form of the NT. Dean Burgon, F. H. A. Scrivener, and Maurice Robinson would be among those who have weighed in favor of this text-type.

Honestly, I’ve carried this as far as I’m going to take it, as I am starting to feel by the nature of your questions that I’m wasting my time. No offense, but we all have to make judgments about the use of our time. Take care.

One comment about the RSV-CE(2): before you spend $270 for the lectionary you might want to spend $30 for the Bible itself. I don’t think the “cleaning-up” of the RSV is very well done. While the “thees” and “thous” were for the most part eliminated, they were still retained in liturgical passages (Model Prayer, etc. so there is inconsistency), in the garden Jesus is now asking for the “chalice” to pass him by, etc. As I said, you might want to review the Bible itself before you spend the money for the lectionary. By the way, the three year lectionary based on the RSV is still floating around, although I’m not sure for how much longer now that TEC has mandated the use of the RCL in NRSV. If you want it I’d get RITEWORD 2000 before the switch is made.

Paul, one question: how close is the Byzantine text to the Received Text? Is there a copy of it available (just the text itself, not all the research and apparatus behind it)?

I have to say that I share Paul’s bafflement concerning your repeated questions about things he’s already addressed, and to my mind quite adequately. He has made clear distinctions between textual criticism as an academic discipline which is done by scholars *apart from* the ministry of the Church, and the Bible as a text of the Church. In this regard, he contends that having a Bible made up by modern scholars based on academic assumptions about the reconstruction of the original text is not the same thing as having an *ecclesiastical* English text. He has not said that this academic discipline should be jettisoned, just that it is not conducive for the construction of a Church Bible. In this regard, he has contended that the Byzantine text, due to its long standing recognition in the traditions of the historical Church, is the best text with which to undertake such a translation. He has even gone so far as to devote an entire separate post devoted to answering your questions.

And he has continued to do so in this thread well after that post has been provided.

Now, you may disagree with his conclusions. That is quite fine. Voice your disagreement and move on. But continuing to ask questions concerning things which have already been clearly addressed is not conducive to productive conversation or, as Paul has already stated, a responsible use of our time.

The differences between the TR and the Byzantine Text are relatively minor and few. I’m not sure on the exact numbers (they are highlighted in the marginal notes in the NKJV), but the differences are often due to the dependence of the TR on the Latin Vulgate. The best modern edition of the Byzantine Text is that of Maurice Robinson and William Piermont, The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform (Chilton Book Publishing, 2005).

Here’s some recent information on a scholar who has produced a modern copyright free and royalty free Byzantine Text Form.
It’s $12 plus shipping and is the best bound Greek NT I’ve ever owned (it was $17.95 at Amazon.com)

This is the best defense I’ve seen of the Byzantine text by the scholar who finalized this NT.

To order one for $12 (which includes the above essay on modern transmission theory behind the Byzantine Text Form) email Dr. Maurice Robinson mrobinson AT sebts DOT edu (replacing the AT with ‘@’ and DOT with ‘.’ of course)